Demand planning applications develop and maintain a comprehensive picture of anticipated demand for an organization's goods and services. Demand planning applications can facilitate communication and collaboration to provide an accurate demand picture.
A demand planning application may utilize a hierarchical data model. A hierarchical data model is a data model in which the data is organized into a tree-like structure. The structure allows representing information using parent/child relationships. For example, a hierarchical data model may be used to store forecasted demands for a product line, such as drink products. In an example hierarchical data model, total forecasted demand for all drink products may be stored at a top level of a hierarchy, while a second level of the hierarchy may contain different types of drinks sold by a company, such as orange juice, pop, and sports drinks. A third level of the hierarchy may retain brands of each type of drink, and a fourth level may store forecasted demands for different packagings for each brand at a stock keeping unit (SKU) level.